Want to browse Vanity Fair magazine on the Denver airport’s free Wi-Fi system? Sorry. You’ll have to buy it at the newsstand, because DIA’s Internet filter blocks Vanity Fair as “provocative.”

You can’t get to the popular gossip column perezhilton.com on DIA’s Wi-Fi signal, either. Or the hipster-geek favorite boingboing.net. Or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit photos, even though the magazine’s bare-breasted cover shot is on prominent display at airport stores, right next to Penthouse and Hustler.

Denver International Airport officials are erring on the side of caution in blocking access to certain sites through the free Internet browser offered to fliers. They say they’re using prudent judgment in a public, family-friendly atmosphere.

But others see it as cyber-censorship that taints Denver’s self-portrayal as a progressive economy.

“Give people some credit,” said David Byrne, founder of the legendary art-rock band Talking Heads, who was blocked from boingboing.net. while connecting through DIA to an Aspen workshop last month. “And the more credit you give them, the more they respond. It’s just trusting people’s discretion.”

Critics, like boingboing.net. editor Xeni Jardin and others, point out that DIA uses the same kinds of software filters employed by the repressive regimes of Sudan and Kuwait. Jardin is tired of her tech-update site getting blocked by private and government filters just because it occasionally posts respected artworks that might include nudity.

“This gets to the heart of what the Internet is all about and whose responsibility it is,” said Jardin, who is based in California. “It seems particularly unfortunate that something as symbolic as the city’s airport, a gateway to culture, commerce and the flow of ideas, would be blocked in such a fundamental way.

“The intent is understandable, but the outcome is bad for Denver.”

Is it prudence or prudery?

Airport spokesman Chuck Cannon said the telecom office decided to use Webwasher’s filtering system when it went from a paid service to free public Wi-Fi in November.

Officials preferred to deal with infrequent blocking complaints rather than angry parents whose children walked by a screen showing pornography, Cannon said.

With more than 4,000 Wi-Fi connections a day, the airport has received only two formal blocking complaints so far, he said. The filtering software appears to be blocking less than 1 percent of 1.7 million Web page requests a day.

As for Sports Illustrated being available at newsstands, but not on Wi-Fi, Cannon said, “That’s a little different than pornography, though I guess others may disagree.”

Who decides those delicate questions is exactly what bothers open-access proponents, including many American library systems. Local libraries and the American Library Association sued the federal government for threatening to withhold funding unless filters were installed on public computers. They lost in a U.S. Supreme Court appeal in 2003.

Denver’s libraries now have a dual system: In children’s areas, all computers are filtered for pornography and other objectionable content. Other computers give patrons a choice between a filtered session and unfiltered access — users 17 or under are supposed to choose the filter.

Byrne would like it noted for the record that he appreciated Denver offering Wi-Fi for free, a perk he doesn’t get at all hotels or airports. But his amused blogging about the block was picked up and passed around the Internet by other techno-savvy writers.

“Software designed for the prudery and rigidity of Sudan is determining user experiences in the United States,” wrote the ISP Planet blog.

Testing the filtering systems leads to the same kind of bewilderment that courts encounter when they try to define “obscenity.”

DIA blocks anything displaying partial nudity or even provocative underwear ads. That cancels everything from major magazines to non-prurient sex-education sites. It does not block Wikipedia’s illustrated entries for “pornography” or “erotica.” It blocks the barely-clothed supermodels of Victoria’s Secret, but not the aggressive profanity of a humor site like The Onion.

No fair googling for rules

Commercial Wi-Fi uses the filters as well — with the same contradictions. FedEx Kinko’s offices charge by the minute for Internet access, using Smartfilter software to block nudity and other allegedly offensive material. Perezhilton.com., Vanity Fair and Sports Illustrated are OK, but Playboy is not, and you can’t Google the word “erotic.” If you try to Google “Smartfilter,” you are blocked from accessing sites that discuss Smartfilter’s tactics.

Boingboing and other sites, meanwhile, fight the system and try to pass on tricks for bypassing filters. Jardin hears from American military personnel overseas who get blocked from boingboing and other harmless sites.

“This manner of policing the Internet has been proven time and time again to be easily circumventable, with any number of means,” Jardin said. “So what it does is just block traffic to legitimate sites. Like the locks on your suitcase only keep the nice guys out.”

Michael Booth was a health care & health policy writer at The Denver Post before departing in 2013. He started his journalism career as an assistant foreign editor at The Washington Post before moving with family to Denver and taking a brief stint with the Denver Business Journal. During a 25-year career at The Post, he covered city and state politics, droughts, entertainment and wrote Sunday takeouts, and was part of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams for breaking news coverage.

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